New York City is surely a melting pot and atracts buyers from all over the world. This diversity makes it an even hotter commodity. According to Bloomberg, "Wealthy foreigners have bought high-end U.S. properties for their safety and because they're denominated in dollars, the world's reserve currency," said Mitchell Roschelle, real estate advisory leader at Pricewaterhouse Coopers LLP.
We interviewed five top NYC real estate experts, each with extensive experience working with aforementioned foreign investors, about the NYC foreign investment market and what it means for NYC sellers.

In the world of real estate, populated by thousands of young and not-so-young men and women in polished suits with beeping phones and ipads, Karina Sagiev, the founding partner of Evans Real Estate Investments is a pleasant surprise. She exudes an air of a congenial hostess, graceful and unassuming, despite the Ivy-League degree on her wall, and the very impressive multi-million-dollar deals she has been closing internationally and throughout New York. She speaks softly and meets your gaze with inquisitiveness and eagerness. She is not rushing you. Sagiev is studying you to learn more about the person that you are, your needs, and aspirations, all of which is very useful information for realtor to have when one is looking for a new home or an investment property.

Foreign Buyers of New York Real Estate Want These Amenities, The Main street, March 11, 2014

"Russians like to negotiate, but in a seller's market in New York City it's almost impossible to negotiate and buyers sometimes have to pay over the asking price," said Karina Sagiev, founder and managing partner of Evans Real Estate Investments . "We sit them down and go over the challenges before they even see properties and inform them that they may face competitive situations."

Listing prices for apartments in new condo buildings in Times Square generally range between $1,500 a square foot and $1,700 a square foot, compared to around $2,200 a square foot for new developments in the West Village, and $1,900 a square foot on the Upper East Side.
“There’s really not much of a discount considering the fact that it’s not in a prime [residential] location,” Karina Sagiev, founder of Evans Real Estate Investments , said.

More Try Living at the Crossroads of the World, The Wall Street Journal, January 17, 2014

"Foreign buyers…tend to really appreciate and like the areas that are iconic to them, that they have images of when they're thinking of New York, and Times Square is one of them," says Karina Sagiev, founder of Evans Real Estate Investments .. "And I think the main attraction is proximity to everything."

Many New York brokers made it into real estate by chance or changing personal fortunes. For Karina Sagiev, it took nothing less than the collapse of an empire. Born in 1973, Sagiev grew up in Soviet Moscow — 8,000 miles and a world apart from the shiny heights of Manhattan real estate. In the capital of fixed prices, (legal) entrepreneurship was an impossibility and brokers about as common as palm trees.

Evans Real Estate Investments, a full-service international residential and commercial real estate brokerage firm specializing in assisting foreign investors, celebrated the grand opening of it's new Lincoln Square office. The firm hosted more than 200 guests, who explored the facilities and enjoyed food and wine; a permanent art display featuring Yeva Dashevsky's close-up photographs of Manhattan architecture; a ribbon-cutting ceremony; and entertainment by DJ MAC - an antique phonograph DJ who plays vintage records from early 20th century. There was also a children's room with Halloween-themed arts and crafts.
Karina Sagiev's, Managing Partner of Evans Real Estate Investments vision is to cultivate a firm that targets all the major international markets and assists buyers and investors from all over the world with all sides of real estate transactions

Evans Real Estate Investments hosts a holiday party this Thursday evening from 6:30 until 9:30 p.m. The event will feature a live jazz performance and an art exhibit. The venue is located at 243 West 60th Street, between West End and Amsterdam avenues.

"As true buyer's agents we wanted to introduce Evans Real Estate Investments to the Upper West Side neighborhood with our version of a house-warming party" said Karina Sagiev, managing partner of Evans Real Estate Investments, as she cut the ribbon to officially open the firm's new Lincoln Center office. More than 100 guests explored the facilities, enjoyed food and wine, a permanent art display featuring Yeva Dashevsky's close-up photographs of Manhattan architecture, and entertainment by DJ MAC - an antique phonograph DJ who plays vintage records from early 20th century.

The four-story, 115-year-old townhouse at the corner of Madison Avenue, which currently has a residential tenant in place, will be available as a rental from June, said listing broker Karina Kheifetz-Sagiev of Evans Real Estate , when the tenant moves out.